MPhil, PhD and EngD

The Bartlett’s reputation for high-quality research extends across almost every facet of the built environment.

We offer opportunities to pursue original and significant research, providing support and supervision from the faculty’s own internationally respected body of specialists, and from UCL’s wider community of leading academics.

The Design route encourages the development of architectural research through the combination of designing and writing. On this route, you will typically be required to present a thesis consisting of a project and a text that share a research theme and a productive relationship. The project may be drawn, filmed, built, or make use of whatever media is appropriate.

The Urban History and Theory route is intended to allow you to conduct an exhaustive, original and creative piece of research into an area of your own selection and definition. The range of research topics undertaken is broad, but most explore the history and theory of architecture and cities between 1800 and the present day.

The Space and Computation route normally requires students to use space syntax theories and methods to study the effects of spatial design on aspects of social, organisational and economic performance of buildings and urban areas; or to apply technology to research into the built environment, bringing innovative computational analytical methods to the heart of the design process.

The Digital Theory route is intended to allow you to produce original research in areas related to computational tools applied to design, regardless of scale, historical timeframe, or methodological approach.

Research within the Bartlett School of Planning ranges from understanding the fundamentals of urban form, complexity, society and development, to critiquing the processes of planning, governance, regeneration and investment, and analysing the outcomes from planning as they affect urban quality, culture, sustainability and mobility.

Students with the ISH will work with people and partners that are engaged with real-world heritage problems and issues, and will conduct research that has the potential to command a global audience and influence.

An interdisciplinary Doctoral Research Programme bringing together economists, philosophers, political scientists, designers, architects, anthropologists, engineers and natural scientists to connect theories of innovation to new thinking about public value creation. IIPP is a new UCL institute providing radical thinking about public policy driven by public purpose.